I just got finished with a family visit to Japan and I haven’t put up a post of random Japan travel recs in a long, long time, so I thought I’d collect some of my thoughts here for this month’s blog post.

• I’ll start with what may be the most controversial point. At this point in my life, I’d rather have 50,000 yen in taxi rides than 50,000 yen in shinkansen tickets. I put the 50,000 yen price tag on there because that’s the current price of the Japan Rail Pass. The price went up dramatically in 2023 from around 30,000 to 50,000 yen. Previously you could cover the cost of the pass with a single trip from Tokyo to Kyoto, just about. Add in a single day trip to Hiroshima or a quick stop in Himeji, and you’ve got a good deal. If you really wanted to cover ground, you could get great value out of it. But currently, unless you’re riding the shinkansen every day of your trip, it’s pretty difficult to get the economics to make sense. And is the goal necessarily to cover ground? I’d much rather pick a spot or two and dig deep rather than try to see everything in Japan. You might argue that the rail pass provides convenience, but the Hikari trains are so infrequent these days I’m not sure that’s the case anymore, and JR isn’t the same in Kansai as it is in Kanto; a JR pass (or even a daily subway pass) isn’t as helpful getting around locally as it is in Tokyo. Plus, if I’m traveling between Kyoto and Osaka, I’d rather be on the Hankyu Line because it’s going to put me in Kawaramachi and Umeda (not to mention that the cars themselves are nice as well). Instead, I’d recommend booking one round-trip shinkansen ticket to somewhere else (maybe Fukuoka or Hiroshima?), or potentially even a plane ticket, and then putting the savings toward taxis. Maybe my body is failing me, but having 10-15 minutes to sit and save time between destinations really helped extend my endurance over the course of the trip and helped us make full use of our limited time.
• Speaking of taxis, Uber works well in Japan (at least in Osaka) and there seem to be a lot of promotions available. The Ubers here are tied in with the taxi system. There did seem to be some other cars available, but they were no cheaper than the taxis, which arrive really quickly. There are also vans available in the app for larger groups. For many of the rides we used, there were 75% or 35% discount promotions. In Kyoto, some areas (like Kiyomizu-dera) are blocked off and you need to set a pick-up location outside of them, and in Osaka some narrow streets required selecting a pick-up spot a short walk away, but this didn’t ever cause much of a headache. I caught an Uber at 4:45 a.m. on my parents’ last day here so that I could meet them at their hotel and get them to the airport on time for check in, so time isn’t an issue either.
• Speaking of airport transportation, Itami Airport (the domestic Osaka airport) is pretty easy to access by public transportation, but it’s also a manageable taxi ride for a group. The “limousine” buses pick up near Osaka Station, but it’s not exactly the easiest location to find, and the earliest buses leave just before 6:00 a.m. and arrive at 6:20 a.m. So if you need to arrive earlier, or if transportation to Osaka Station is difficult, an Uber isn’t an unreasonable price to split. The costs I was seeing were around 5,000-6,000 yen, which isn’t terrible if you have 2-3 people riding. My family wanted something that would take reservations (which I learned later that you can do within the Uber app), so we ended up hiring a bus from Nihon Kotsu which was easy enough to set up, and we were able to get them to pick up at two separate locations at 5:30 a.m. It cost 20,000 yen, but we split it between five people. They were very, very easy to work with via phone and email, but you need to know Japanese.
• Overall, Osaka is a great place to visit. We had an awesome time with my family. I won’t say it’s a forgotten part of Japan—we do get our fair share of tourists—but we’re not bombarded like Tokyo and Kyoto, except for a few main tourist districts, notably Dotonbori, Shinsekai, and Umeda. Many of the other neighborhoods were super easy to get around. Only Dotonbori rivals the worst of Tokyo and Kyoto’s crowding. I will say that it’s difficult to say where to take people here. Sure, we have Osaka Castle and Dotonbori, but I’m not sure if anything else has the same awe factor as the temples in Kyoto and cityscapes of Tokyo. Personally I’d take the quiet backstreets and 商店街 (shopping arcades) of Osaka almost every day, but tourist expectations are a bit of a different beast. If you’ve got a discerning eye for weathered urban Japan, come see us in Osaka. In the newsletter this month, I call Osaka a “matte finish” city, which I thought felt appropriate, compared to the glossy finish of Tokyo and the lacquer finish of Kyoto.
• The Tenjinbashi-suji Shotengai and the area around JR Temma Station is the best and most underrated neighborhood in Osaka. I put my parents at a hotel near the shopping arcade, and they had a great time. It’s a well-trafficked, healthy area with a combination of businesses that have been there forever and some that turnover, bringing new life to the neighborhood. On a random Tuesday weekday at midday, there were a steady stream of locals walking up and down the arcade, I imagine transferring between subway stops and the JR or vice versa. There are cafes, restaurants, bars, boutiques, a lovely shrine in Osaka Tenmangu, and all of it is within a five-minute bus/subway ride or a 30-minute walk of Osaka Station. The weekend vibes in the Temma area in particular are probably what most tourists want in a visit to Japan: narrow alleyways, groups talking loudly over ホルモン hotpot or kushikatsu, wine bars, craft beer pubs, random back-alley takoyaki. It’s got everything.
• Nakazakicho is a curious little neighborhood! Near the northern terminal of the Tenjinbashi-suji Shotengai, Nakazakicho Shotengai shoots off perpendicularly to the west and ends just before the heart of Nakazakicho, which then blends into Chayamachi, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Umeda. Osaka is basically a grid city, but the grid breaks down in Nakazakicho, and it feels like Tokyo 下町 (shitamachi) combined with Brooklyn; there are countless cafes, boutiques, izakaya, antique stores, used clothing shops, and other businesses that speckle the neighborhood. The strange part is that it doesn’t feel overtouristed, for whatever reason. One of my brothers stayed in an Airbnb in the neighborhood and had a great time exploring. Personally I’d prefer to be closer to Tenjinbashi-suji if I was a tourist, and as a long-term resident the neighborhood would feel a little too “loud” for me (but it’s not actually loud in terms of volume…just foot traffic), but you might prefer something closer to Nakazakicho if you’re visiting.
• It’s really easy to get a suit made quickly in Japan! My parents forgot their wedding outfits, so we had to get my dad a new suit. Suit Select had one for us with the pants hemmed within an hour. Obviously it’s not going to be a perfect fit, but it looked really nice, and only cost 60,000 yen, which feels like a much steeper price in JPY than it does in USD at the moment. I think there are probably more affordable options to be had at retailers like Aoyama (洋服の青山) or even at Uniqlo, which can also hem pants very, very quickly. I just didn’t think putting my 70+ father in a Uniqlo suit made sense, ha.
• We had to get much luckier with my mother, and what bizarre luck we did have. I did a Google Maps search around their hotel, which turned up the appropriately named 着物再生工場 (Kimono Reuse Factory). This is a small company that takes old kimono and repurposes them into dresses. Their main location is in Tokyo, but their (very small) Osaka branch happens to be three blocks from where my parents were staying, which was incredibly convenient. I emailed with them and arranged a time to look at a few options. My mom thought them through, and we went with one option which looked really nice. This, combined with a friendly, neighborhood salon right across from the shrine which did my mom’s hair the morning of the wedding, created an easy solution for what could have been a nightmare situation. My mom actually wants to have a dress made with them now, so I might be hunting for used kimono in the near future. I’d highly recommend their dress rental services and their dress making, if you’re in the market. The rental only cost 20,000 yen, which seems very reasonable compared to some of the tuxedo rental prices I was seeing (upwards of 40,000+ yen), although having a dress made with them would cost a good bit more.

Check out the newsletter for a deep dive into 筋 (suji). And here’s the podcast with more on this interesting kanji and everything above: